How to Reserve the CAVE for Use For BVW

Please Note: The CAVE is not available for use on Saturdays, an has limited hours on Sundays.

To request a time-slot in the CAVE, please contact either of your CAVE TA's: Trisha Surve or Axel Arth

Because time is limited in the CAVE, please only reserve blocks of up to two consecutive hours. This will allow multiple teams access to the CAVE on a daily basis.

Requests for time in the CAVE must be made by 5:00 PM the day before. Requests made after 5:00 PM, or same day requests, will not be considered.

Getting into the CAVE for Use for BVW

To ensure that nothing in the CAVE is damaged, the door is kept locked. The only student key is kept with CAVE TA Axel Arth.

Be at the CAVE entrance on the 2nd floor when your reserved time begins. A TA will check you into the CAVE.

If you are five minutes or more late to your reserved time, you will forfeit that reserved hour.

When your assigned time in the CAVE has finished, a TA will come and check you out of the CAVE

If anything has gone wrong during your time, please let a TA know, and we'll begin to fix it as soon as we are able.

If you are not in the CAVE when a TA come to check you out, you will be banned from the CAVE for the next 24 hours of operation.

Leaving the cave unattended, or leaving the door unlocked, is not acceptable. If a team is caught doing either, you will be banned from the CAVE for the next 24 hours of operation.

Consider using a buddy system while working in the CAVE. It will also prevent miscommunication that may come from only one person working away from the rest of the team.

If a different team is in the CAVE than who has reserved the time, both teams are banned from the CAVE for the remainder of the round.

CAVE Policies

When enter, you should move the curtain aside to turn on the lights. Do not place your hand through the circuitry pillar.

Turn off projectors and lights before leaving. ( Once a projector has been turned off its fan needs to cycle for at least five minutes before it can be turned on again. )

Do not have open food or drinks inside the CAVE.

Do not use the trash can inside the CAVE. It is not emptied often.

You must take your props out of the CAVE when you leave.

Lock the door when you leave.

Only test your project in the CAVE. Do not spend time to work on the project in the CAVE.

When planning for BVW festival, if a world requests to not use the outer facade for theming purposes, it is possible to move the outer facade to the side, but highly not recommended.

There is a light button outside the door that will be turned on during festival to attract visitors. ( It is apart of the facade so it only is available it the facade is in place )

Hardware

The floor platform must begin and end at the lowest point. This is for safety reasons. It can be lifted to approximately 2ft. - 2ft.6” high.

We cannot do anything about the sounds the floor makes. Design your project in a way that takes advantage of the physical and sound components inside the CAVE.

No high heels on the platform. No jumping. No painting or drilling.

If the floor breaks, it could be a 3-month turnaround, so please use it with care.

Be careful about the height sensors, attached to the back of the floor platform. People should not be kicking or putting stuff against them.

The 2 benches in the room can be put on the floor, and the chair in the computer corner. You can strap these to the floor.

If you hear air leaking from the floor, turn off the pump. It’s on the wall behind the computer.

Vive is currently getting set up. No more PS Moves or Kinects.

The room has 5.1 surrounding sound system.

Students should be wary of the camera height, as that needs to match the guest’s orientation.

Software

Do not install anything on the machine. Use Perforce to transfer files to it.

Do not plug anything into the machine. No USB drives and no extra input devices.

Everything done on the machine should be saved in the right folder (e.g: BVW 2018), NOT on the desktop.

Students can only use the “Development Partition” side, not the "Production" side. If the "Production" side is up, restart the computer. The "Development Partition" side has a colorful background image on the desktop that states that it is the development side and is intended for ETC classes.

Only Ruth can use "Production" side. This is setup for tours so that the machine is clean and functional at any time that a tour may be needed.

Nobody should go into Ruth’s Development Folder.

Projector screens are now 16:9 instead of 4:3 (before summer 2018). The new setting file should get things mostly aligned for you.

Nobody is allowed to change a display layout. If the mouse is missing, just keep moving it to the left side panel. This is important to ensure that the world is displayed on the proper screen.

The lighting controller is on the desktop and NEEDS to be open for Unity to control the lights.

Students should NOT use any of Ruth’s example art.

Everything in the template project is laid out for easy understanding.

Running the startup file will set everything to their safe positions, EXCEPT the projectors.

The floor and lights should not be controlled in “Update.”

The Unity Package is on the desktop; it can be put on the Wiki, but the most up-to-date version will be on the desktop.

Ruth has written instructions for importing the package into a project. Which can be found on the desktop right next to the setup package.

TA/Instructors (Cave and Vive)

Cave and Vive Setup (The students don't need to do any of this since they will be provided with the package. This is for TAs/Instructors who wish to setup vive with the cave in the future)

1. Open the CaveSetup project file

2. Import steam vr plugin

3. Drag the CameraRig and SteamVR prefabs (SteamVR->prefabs) into the scene

4. Delete Camera under [CameraRig] (Since we are not using the Vive headset, there is no need for this camera.

We will be using the Camera-left, Camera-Right, Camera-Center from CameraNode->Camera Rig)

5. Set the new position of the [CameraRig] to (242.01, 4.25, 151.55), the scale to (2.811944, 2.811943, 2.811943) and the rotation to (0,180,0)

This is to make sure it aligns perfectly inside the Cave-BoxSetup and the controllers are mapped correctly on to the screens

6. For the Camera-left, Camera-Right, Camera-Center from CameraNode->Camera Rig, set the Target Eye to None (Main Display) in the inspector for the

Camera component.

This is to make sure none of the steamvr settings override these cameras.

(SteamVR tends to change the position, rotation and FOV of all the cameras in the scene that have their

Target Eye set to Both, which is the default value)

7. Follow testing without building instructions to test the setup without actually making a build

8. Then run the scene

9. When you run it for the first time, you'll notice a steamVR message that reads "It looks like you haven't generated actions for SteamVR Inmput yet. Would you like to open SteamVR Input window". Click on yes.

10. This opens up a SteamVR input window. Click on Save and Generate at the end to generate action set classes. (new update requires you to do so)

11. Now when you run it, you should be able to see your controller on the screens.

When all screens are not projected correctly (Not for students. This is for TAs/Instructors who run into this problem)

(The system could accidentally read the Vive headsets view as one of the displays and might end up projecting it on the screen)

1. Exit from SteamVR and Steam

2. Pull out the HMD and USB connected to the Vive

3. The system should now be able to detect only 3 screens (Left, Center, Right)